Aside from being assaulted by homework and prepping for the LSAT, this chapter has just been murderous hell to write, because the fun parts in the middle and the end (and the next fic/OC in chronological order, actually...I've got this all plotted out) are just so much more distracting, and my brain would rather go back and pick those apart than write something new, yet mildly boring and expository.
So, once again, sorry for the long wait, and here's the next chapter, which is coming in spurts with several more. Please read and review!
Severus Snape loathed Advances in Defense Against the Dark Arts. While it seemed like a humorous prospect to take a look at what Albus Dumbledore's silly team of fools had cooked up to defend themselves, it often turned out to be some simple drivel involving—he shuddered—love. Given his preference, he'd rather pore over Potente Potions Periodicalle during breakfast (as he often found that dealing with Wormtail significantly diminished his appetite); but it hadn't arrived in months: its editor, Nicholas Flamel, had left fifty future issues to sustain his readers when he had decided to succumb to death, but his executors had exhausted that material without bothering to appoint a successor to generate new content. Severus had loved potions once, but years of teaching it to incompetent dunderheads had utterly ruined the subtle science for him.
Of course, he was still teaching it to a select few larger and older bumbling idiots, but with one ever-so-slight difference: were he to point out their incompetence to these powerful few, they were fully capable of casting an Unforgivable at him, or reporting him to the Dark Lord. Their pureblood heritage would carry more weight with the Dark Lord, Snape thought, weighing his secret desire to inform MacNair of the precise and spectacular degree of his utter stupidity.
Still, Severus thought to himself, Advances in Defense Against the Dark Arts had one good point: its monthly columnist, Sakura Uzume, was breathtakingly beautiful in the sense that she looked like a deadlier version of his Akiko, the pretty pixie of so many years ago. This fact, while it made looking at her photograph a pleasant experience, diminished any respect he may have harbored for what the writer had to say in the paragraphs beneath it. Yet, occasionally and not completely by accident, Uzume had something mildly intelligent to say; Severus had incorporated her dueling suggestions into his style more than once. He had eventually determined, through a few of the Dark Lord's contacts in recordhouses in Japan, that Akiko was (by birth) Uzume's second cousin, once removed.
As he flicked absently through the parchment pages of the new edition, he couldn't help thinking that he had known Uzume, once—according to records she'd lived in London during the First War, only a few blocks from where he had been living—but if he had encountered her, it had been in a time where he had been distracted by more pressing matters. He shook his head, fiercely, dismissing the thought as merely a particularly strong incidence of déjà vu, and finally came to the page where Sakura Uzume's column was printed, to find a photograph of—Merlin's beard—a heart-faced witch with brown eyes and spiky hair of an odious hue of pink that assaulted the optic nerves. The hallmarks of a particularly despised former student were unmistakably burnt into his memory: a clumsy, cheerful fourth year, whom he never would have admitted into his NEWT classes had it not been for the intervention of influential family members, and who had been the bane of his existence for his first several years of teaching. Thankfully, by the time he had had the misfortune of encountering Nymphadora Tonks in adult life, Neville Longbottom and Harry Potter had long since ousted her from her position as Most Despised Imbecile of All Time.
"What the—" he skimmed over the words of the article, finding them just as vapid as he had expected them to be, until he came upon a small box at the bottom of the column, which said, "Former columnist Sakura Uzume, late of Wazuma Daigakuin Daigaku, has accepted a post as Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We wish her all the best as we rotate through interim columnists."
So Akiko's cousin was at Hogwarts...which meant she was somewhere in Britain again, instead of half a world away. Interesting, Severus thought to himself. Very...interesting.
Later that week, Ron, Harry, and Hermione were sitting on Ron's bed in Gryffindor Tower, working on homework. Of late, they had found the common room to be too empty for comfort, and had avoided it entirely when not Flooing to and from class. "Blimey, if I didn't know better I'd think they were all trying to kill us," said Ron, slamming shut a book he'd just finished using to write a vicious essay for McGonagall.
"You know why they're assigning more, though, don't you? They want us to be prepared," Hermione replied evenly.
"Yeah, well, Sakura's the only one that's prepared me for anything so far, and she's not asked us to touch quill to paper outside of class," Ron retorted.
"So you admit you were wrong about her, then?" Hermione asked pointedly. Ron pretended not to hear, and Hermione looked over to Harry. "Harry…have you opened that box yet?"
"I don't want to," Harry muttered, sliding off the bed and letting his feet hit the floor.
"Oh, but," Hermione began, but he interrupted her viciously as he shuffled to his own bed.
"But nothing, Hermione. I don't want to bloody hear it," he said, as, wand in hand, he batted a pile of junk off his bed. Suddenly, there was a loud squealing noise from beneath the rubbish Harry had scraped onto the floor. "That's dodgy," he commented, quizzically, pulling a few shirts off the floor until he located the source of the squealing: a ball, made of thin blown glass, which, once he lifted it, ceased squealing but continued to stay red.
"What's under…" he pulled a few more books and shirts off the floor until he found the Dark object: the box, stamped with the letterhead of Blackstone, Dowery, Habeas, and Limine, LL.W.B. He looked at Hermione, who motioned for him to open it. "All right," he said defeatedly. "I'll open it. I'll open it." He straightened, and intoned, "Diffindo!" as he touched the top of the box with his wand, then jumped back.
The top of the box fell open rather anticlimactically. The three of them stared, as though expecting something else to happen: Harry standing there, Ron sitting on his bed with one jumper-clad arm wrapped around Hermione's collarbone like a long, maroon scarf. After nothing happened for several seconds, Ron finally harrumphed nervously and asked, "Wotcha reckon's in there?"
"Dunno. Probably Snape's things that're the Dark stuff," Harry replied. He prodded about with his wand. "I don't fancy pawing through the old greasy git's personal things…"
"Oh, honestly," Hermione groaned, extracting herself from Ron's arms, and reached down inside the box. She pulled out a large, sealed parchment envelope, a smaller, sealed parchment envelope, a folded parchment, and a large box, lined in silvery pewter-colored velvet. She set the four items out on Harry's bed. "Can you pass me the Sneakoscope?" she asked, and Harry handed her the glass sphere that had squealed earlier. She examined it. "This isn't a Sneakoscope. Where's your Sneakoscope—you know, the one Ron gave you?"
"Well, if that's not my Sneakoscope, then what is it?"
"It's one of the new Remembralls, Harry. I gave it to you for your birthday, don't you remember?" Admittedly, Harry didn't: years of Hermione's reminder-gifts had run together so thoroughly that he couldn't distinguish one from another, and was quite honestly surprised that this one had managed to worm its way in with his school things as he peered at the tiny illuminated R etched into the glass that Hermione was indicating with her thumbnail. "Sneakoscopes turn green. Here, let me show you. Accio Sneakoscope!" Another hollow glass ball shot towards Hermione and then stopped, quivering in midair beside her. She absently plucked it from its position, then held it over each of the objects in turn. No green light came forth, and Hermione harrumphed resentfully. "Distinctly peculiar," she muttered.
"Which d'ye wanna open first?" Ron asked.
Harry didn't have a particular desire to open any of them, since the entire business seemed like a awful parody of Boxing Day, but of the four, Dumbledore's letter was the most appealing. Wordlessly, he reached out and, hands trembling, picked up the small envelope. It was addressed, somewhat hurriedly, to "Harry Potter and friends, in the event of my decease." Harry ran his fingers beneath the wax seal of the envelope, and opened it. It fell forgotten to the flagstones as he pulled out the folded parchment of the letter.
"May 31, 1997.
Harry (and Hermione and Ron, of course),
If you are reading this, the events of this evening probably did not bode as well for me as I had hoped. You have probably, by now, found and removed something of Rowena Ravenclaw's that has served as a Horcrux, and are at a loss as to how to destroy it. The solution lies buried with A.I. Vance. The items enclosed should help you to find A.I. Vance, in the last known location occupied. Pay particular attention to the contents of Professor Snape's desk, which are enclosed in the envelope. (The contents of the box belonged to Severus as a younger man.)
Fondly,
Albus Dumbledore
One post-script: Do not permit Gideon Habeas to browbeat you into signing further documents that you have not read. I myself once initialed fifty pages before I realized that I was authorizing a caveat that gave him exclusive custody of my toenail clippings. Should you ever have problems understanding a document, fire-call William Blackstone, as I have taken the liberty of retaining him as your personal counsel."
Harry tapped the top of the parchment. "May 31st—that was the night we went after the..." He reached absently into his pocket and gripped the false Horcrux.
Hermione picked up the larger envelope. "It said pay particular attention to the contents of Professor Snape's desk," she suggested timidly, weighing the envelope heavily in her hands. "Perhaps you should look at them."
Harry reached out to the envelope, broke the seal, and opened it. He reached inside, and felt several worn parchments, interspersed with a few magazine clippings. Feeling nothing breakable, he upended the envelope on his bed. "Looks like he cleaned out before he skived off," Harry commented, dividing the fragments of parchment into three piles. "Right. Everyone take a stack and look through it."
"Do I have to?" Ron whined, but before he could whine further, he was drowned out by a resounding and irritated retort of "Yes," from both Harry and Hermione. Grumbling, he set about going through the parchments.
"Slug and Jiggers receipt...Slug and Jiggers receipt...honestly, if I see one more invoice for toad bowels I'll go absolutely spare," Ron groused to himself. "Staff memo...page out of his ledger... Bloody hell, I'd be a disagreeable git too if my life was this boring. You'd think being one of the Dark Lord's minions would be more action and less paperwork." The redhead picked up a page and began to read it in an exaggerated false voice. "Dear Diary; today I was a greasy slimeball git. Went to class and tried to figure out how I could crawl further up Malfoy's..."
"Look at this—he had a girl's picture with his things," Harry interrupted Ron as he showed the two of them a wizarding photograph, obviously yellowed with age, of an Asian girl in faded Muggle jeans and a red satin Oriental blouse with a high-buttoned neck. The girl was giggling and laughing, and occasionally paused to blow a kiss at the photographer. "Hang on...it's got writing all over the back side of it, but I can't read it, it looks like...Japanese." Harry squinted at the back of the photo, as the girl in the photograph, excited at finally receiving some attention, stuck out her tongue cheekily at Ron and Hermione. "Maybe I'll ask Sakura what it means after next class Thursday..."
"Ron, Harry...take a look at this," Hermione said softly. "He's got four clippings from Advances in Defense Against the Dark Arts here..."
"Probably trying to read up on what the other side's doing, the slimeball..." Harry muttered, but Hermione wordlessly turned the parchment around. At the top of the page was a photograph of Sakura Uzume.
"Sakura was a columnist for them?" Harry asked, peering over the top of his glasses.
"She may be in danger..." Hermione supplied. "We should warn her."
"I could ask her what the writing means..." Harry mused.
"Sounds like a brilliant excuse to be out in the hallways. Let's go!" Ron tossed down his pile in a snowstorm of parchments.
"But..." The look on Hermione's face indicated that she was clearly wrestling with an unhealthy bout of respect for authority.
"C'mon, Hermione! You're Head Girl, I'm a Prefect, and Harry's, well, Harry. If that's not enough authority to be out in the halls, what is?" Ron cajoled her.
"Oh...can't we Floo there?"
"Fires go out after classes are over," Harry pointed out.
"Oh...all right...all right...But let's take the Invisibility Cloak, to be sure."
Yes, the interpretive diary reading was a tribute to Firefly's Jayne Cobb. (I went to see Serenity Friday night, and it was incredible, although it had the unfortunate side effect of making all my characters sound like space cowboys.)
While I have your attention, on the other fics-I-read front, if you haven't read Cecelle's Mist and Vapors yet, go read it. The whole thing. Right. Now. Even before you read my next chapter. Because chapter 43 was just too squeal-worthy for words.